We spent most of our day off by updating our social media,
cleaning the trailer of as much Dempster dust as possible, and converting the
bikes from gravel wheels and tires to our road slicks.
Our first pavement ride should have been smooth sailing but fate
had other plans for our travelling show. The day started off as good as
any cyclist could ever hope. Even though we had a giant tail wind riding
into Dawson City two days before we were thankfully shooed out of town by a
generous tail wind once again.
The buttery smooth pavement of the Dawson City limits quickly came
to an end and we spent most of the day riding what could be described as gravel
with a light spritz of tar. Crashing at any time on a bicycle is not very
much fun but on this chip tar surface it is extra nasty. Unfortunately
that's exactly what happened. About 120km into our 150km ride we came
around a corner going fairly quickly, say 35kph, and were greeted by a bear
about 100m away in the middle of the road. The group slowed before all of us had time to react and 2 of us went down. Dawit unfortunately took the
hardest hit by landing on his face and getting the wind knocked out of him. Robert's landing was thankfully softened by Dawit and was mostly OK. We immediately began to go through the routine of administering first
aid. I am actually really relieved that I just took the course again only
a few months ago as it helped to keep the situation (me) calm. We had a
first aid kit with us and
Jason, Robert, and I had a very somber ride back to camp that
night. We pretty much sprinted back and it was the longest 25km I have
ever ridden. A million thoughts about what to do next were going through
our heads. As we pulled into the camp site I almost didn't want to know
what the latest diagnosis was as I was fearing the worst.
What we found was Dawit back to his usual happy self, already
making jokes about his increasingly swollen face. Lindsay and Marin took
very good care of him while we were riding back and it was determined that it
was superficial, a hospital visit wasn't required.
That was a very scary scene.....I thought Dawit was severely injured.....not to mention there was a freaking bear up the road as Dawit was down and out. Thankfully he was all right and the bear took off.
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